Volume 3, No. 2: A Love Letter to Spreadsheets and Slowness
Reflections on My Past & Future Reading Life
Greetings, book and treat people!
In her latest newsletter, artist Anna Brones wrote about January as an in-between month. My birthday is in early January, and as a winter lover, January is one of my favorite months. I love the sharp sunlight and the way the air smells, the dark mornings and the golden afternoons. It’s always felt, to me, like a month for reflection, a time to slow down and dig in to grounding routines and practices. It’s also always felt like a time to leap off a cliff into the fresh bracing air—a time to try new things and shake off old patterns.
I love this idea of January as an in-between month because it makes space for both of these truths. Yes, I make new spreads in my planner, and get excited about my shiny new reading spreadsheet, and feel a sense of wonder and possibility. But I’m also still me, still muddling through, not sure yet which new routines will stick and which ones are just fluff. It is still deep winter, and my body is in hibernation mode. I’m craving slowness.
It is in this spirit of in-betweenness that I bring you these reflections on my reading in 2022 and my hopes and dreams for my reading in 2023. It’s all jumbled together—what I loved about last year’s reading, what I learned, what’s already working for me this year. Goals and projects and musings, metrics and unquantifiable realizations. I hope these messy reflections will bring you some inspiration, or excitement, or comfort as you move through this strange and beautiful in-between month.
My Commonplace Book
In 2022, I started a commonplace book. This was, without a doubt, the best new practice I wove into my reading life last year. I’d been thinking about starting one for a long time, and when I finally did—well, I love it more than I even imagined I would.
I love the idea of a book journal, and maybe one day I’ll start one. A place to write down thoughts about books, make pretty collages, record quotes, etc.—it sounds wonderful. But the truth is that I am a spreadsheet person. I’ve tried various other ways of tracking my reading over the years and nothing sticks. I always thought a commonplace book would be the same, that I wouldn’t be able to keep it up. How wonderful to be wrong!
I transcribed hundreds and hundred of quotes into my commonplace book last year. I love the practice of it, sitting down with a stack of books, revisiting passages I loved, choosing images to go with each quote. I also love the way it has made me slow down and pay closer to attention to what I read. I can’t wait to see what my commonplace book looks like in another year, or five, or twenty—a living record of the words that have moved and changed me.
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